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In Pendleton: Newfound well power

Pendleton's groundwater aquifer was dropping by 3.5 feet a year before the city started refilling it with water from the Umatilla River. The city is now looking to generate hydropower at five well pumps that send the river water underground.

Twenty years ago, the state shut down eastern Oregon farmer Kent Madison’s water well to protect overdrawn groundwater below.

He was left with a 700-foot well and a pump that he owned but couldn’t use.

It was 10 years before he found a way to legally refill the underground aquifer with water he could use on his farm. New laws and permitting processes allowed Madison to inject winter flood water from nearby Butter Creek into the aquifer below so he could use it later for summertime irrigation.

This aquifer storage and recovery process is now used in numerous locations across the Northwest to store water while it’s abundant and save it for drier days. According to the Oregon Water Resources Department, the concept offers many benefits including a hedge against climate change and population growth.

But Madison discovered another benefit: You can use it to generate power.

The pumps used to bring water out of underground aquifers can double as micro-hydropower turbines when water goes the other way – back into the aquifer hundreds of feet below. The power generated can offset the cost of pumping the water back up.

He noticed that when he recharged the aquifer under his well, he was sending the water down a 620-foot drop.

“If I were sitting at the base of a dam that was 620 feet high, I’d try to capture some energy off of it,” he said. “So, I started thinking, ‘How do I capture energy off that water 600 feet below the ground’s surface?’”

He devised a way to do it by applying wind-energy technology to the water pumping system.

Here’s how it works: The water pump itself has a mechanism that keeps the pumping bowl from spinning backwards when it’s not moving water upwards. When water flows down through the pump, the bowl spins backwards, but not fast enough to generate energy on its own. By attaching a regenerative drive to the system, Madison created an electronic brake that generates heat as the pump bowl spins.

“That’s energy,” Madison said. “You take a slow-spinning turbine, apply a brake to it, and it creates more energy than it takes to apply the brake.”

With a grant from Oregon Energy Trust, Madison developed a successful prototype that now recovers 47 percent of the energy it takes for him deliver the water to the pump site. By applying ready-made technology, Madison said, “it was incredibly easy to do.”

Pendleton's water wells might not look like much from above, but there's a lot going on underground.

Is it easy enough for an entire city to do, too? City of Pendleton Public Works Director Bob Patterson loved Madison’s idea.

Pendleton has been recharging its aquifer with water from the Umatilla River since 2004, and is now trying to put Madison’s method to work on a larger scale.

Though the end result – even with similar generators in five wells – is still pretty small-scale in the world of power production.

Nonetheless, if everything goes as planned, the city’s $500,000 investment in the technology – $80,000 will be offset by clean energy subsidies – should be repaid within six or seven years.

According to the city’s calculations, the five wells together will generate 1 million to 1.2 million kilowatt hours of electricity over the duration of the recharging season. That should add up to $62,000-$72,000 in annual savings.

Pendleton Public Works Director Bob Patterson explains how the power generated by the regenerative drive inside the well pump will be accounted for and sent to the grid.

“We’re really thinking of it as an offset for our overall power bill,” said Patterson. “We pay $400,000 a year for a water supply system to lift water out of the wells and run our water treatment plant.”

Meanwhile, the recharging effort is slowly reversing annual declines in the city’s aquifer. The aquifer level was dropping 3.5 feet a year as groundwater was removed for city residents and rural farmers. The level should increase by 1 foot a year over time as the city injects more water into the aquifer than it removes and relies more on surface water from the Umatilla River.

Pendleton is ahead of the pack when it comes to developing municipal hydropower projects, said Jed Jorgensen, senior project manager for Energy Trust. The city of Portland signed a deal in October to add in-pipe hydropower to its municipal water mains. But that’s another rare case.

“In general, these municipal hydro projects are still very few and far between,” he said. “For the most part it’s because they require a tremendous amount of permitting for a small amount of energy.”

Pendleton is still working through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s requirements for adding hydropower to its water wells. Next month, the city will submit its final application, which will go out for public comment before FERC makes a decision.

Patterson said he’s hoping all the permits will be in-hand by March so the city can test the system and start generating power when it recharges the aquifer next winter.

EarthFix is a public media partnership of Oregon Public Broadcasting, Idaho Public Television, KCTS9 Seattle, KUOW Puget Sound Public Radio, Northwest Public Radio and Television, Jefferson Public Radio, KLCC and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.